Phonolite: From the ancient Phoenician, phoenolyte. Posited by archaeo-climatologists as a complicated temperature scale measuring temperature via the digestive tract of domesticated ungulates and the quality of light as witnessed through the prismatic spectrum.

Unlike his ever-trading brethren in nearby Phoenician cities, herdsman Itthobaal Milkherem (translation: Joe Smith) preferred a quiet life wandering the meadows, ruminating with his flock of cows. One day, while searching for his absent mind, Itthobaal concluded that by listening closely to the sounds of cud chewing and comparing the chorus of masticatory melodies with the varying qualities of light, he was able to determine whether he felt hot, warm, cool or cold. Later that night in their hut, after he expounded upon his new theory, Itthobaal’s wife scolded him. “You don’t need a scale to tell you that, you silly shepherd!” she said.

But Itthobaal was convinced that in phoenolyte, he’d made a discovery for the ages. And so one day he set out on a pilgrimage, spreading his newly coined word which people found useful as conversation filler, even if they had no idea what it meant. The musically adventurous plucked the scale on their lyres, but the music sounded more flatulent than tuneful and left the musicians cold, even on a hot day. However, Itthobaal spread the news near and far, culminating in a visit to the famous Oracle of Delphi where he set up a ballpark hot dog stand and lived the rest of his life in obscurity because no one had invented baseball yet.

Intriguingly, wandering nomads, known for their concern about properly maintaining body heat, used the phoenolyte scale intermittently through successive centuries, eventually wandering (nomadically) as far away as the Falkland Islands, where penguins preferred it over the confusion created by the constantly in-fighting firm of scientists, Kelvin, Celsius and Fahrenheit.

The phonolite scale, as we call it today, remained regrettably lost in the so-called mists of thyme, until rediscovered by audio archaeologists sifting through thousands of hours of tapes recorded by Falkland military herbologist and amateur sound technician, Sir Fernando Lemmingwild-Hough, whose parents met during the infamous Falkland Island war between Argentina, Great Britain and Herb Wadsack, a character from a simulated computer game. Once they decoded the unusually complex penguin dialect, linguists discovered a previously unknown, long forgotten temperature scale. After a decade of peer-reviewed journaling, they passed on to archaeologists what they mildly referred to as “this ersatz pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo claptrap.” The archaeologists passed it on to cultural anthropologists, who passed it on to top level government scientists, who passed it on to low level climatologists who had enough on their hands with global warming. Plus, as devotees of heavy metal, they refused to use the scale because the name “phonolite” made them think of “easy listening music.” And so, Itthobaal Milkherem’s intriguing theory is today no more than an obscure historical footnote, although there’s a colony of penguins on the march who think otherwise.

Actual meaning: a rare, light-colored (usually gray or green) volcanic rock composed of feldspars and nepheline. The name in Greek means “sounding stone.”

Along with information about the novel, I answered a few questions about writing, including the perennial, “What advice would you give aspiring writers?” Below, find my answer, although I know that I could write (and talk) at much greater length about this topic!

Read for pleasure and read as a writer. I’ve learned so much from reading widely, discovering what I like, what I don’t like, figuring out what works, what doesn’t work. and why.

I’ve spent a lot of time writing in notebooks (and on the computer). I have a long-time diary/journal which serves many purposes, but especially as a way of learning how to write. The journal helps me capture the life around me, gives me the opportunity to think about and ponder people, play with dialogue, experiment with description, tell the story of a given day or event. I also have more topical notebooks – dreams, memories, and “people,” and I carry a pocket notebook wherever I go. That concentrated, but informal writing – not intended for publication – resembles sketches for a painter, practice for a musician, rehearsal for an actor. It all pays off by making you a much better writer. Each writer, though, must find his or her own path and best methods.

For my earlier thoughts on the writing process and more, see my “self-interview on BookGoodies.com here: BookGoodies Interview

Like this:

I recently filled out a “self-interview” on the BookGoodies.com website. Click on this link BookGoodies Interview to check out some of my thoughts on the writing process, writing advice, publishing, and about my novel, Prairie Hill

Here is a sample:

What inspires you to write?

I can’t really imagine not writing. When I was a little kid I adored listening to my father and grandmother tell amusing tales and I loved their reading bedtime stories to me. I began reading as soon as I could and then my teachers complained that I would get lost in books. I found diary/journal writing a wonderful way of capturing the world around me, slowing it down, allowing me to ponder and try to understand. I began to write fiction in my teens, at first autobiographically, but after a time using my imagination more and more. Editing literary magazines taught me so much about writing. My son, who constantly craved “pretend stories” on our walks together, inspired me. Now, my journal is ever more narrative and I dream stories. I feel happiest when writing. There is nothing I like better to do.

Virustatic: 1) a he-man so muscle-bound and manly that he becomes entirely incapable of moving. 2) a virulent variety of static disparaged by some and hailed by others for inconveniently disrupting radio and television transmissions.

Gurp was the youngest son of the once world-renowned former wrestler and gubernatorial candidate, Ferd Ferdelance. After a long-suffering youth in which he witnessed his father’s downfall, Ferd was determined not to make the same mistakes and wind up a lonely cleaner out of cages at the Minnetonkan Herpetarium. But what to do instead? “Why am I here?” he pondered. “What am I here for?”

He lifted weights, barbells, bookcases, buckets of sand, bags of bilbos, boxes of Special K, whatever was handy. Soon he sported bulging muscles rippling up and down his arms and legs and ears. His chest expanded exponentially. His shoulders broadened broadly. His nose grew several inches and was capable of lifting a 40 pound dog all on its own. Gurp kept hoisting and heaving until one day he lifted his house off of its foundation, carried it to the city park, where he beat his chest in triumph and then discovered that he had become virustatic. One by one his fingers froze in place. Gurp could no longer lift anything, not even a speck of dust. His tongue was so muscle-bound he could no longer speak. He couldn’t even bat an eyelash at one of the growing crowd of attractive women staring at him. He just stood in the one position, a haven for passing pigeons and scolding squirrels. Passersby couldn’t help thinking of the Tin Woodman in the Wizard of Oz at the time of his discovery in the dismal forest by the Dark Prince of Hollywood. Some joker poured a little oil in Gurp’s oversized ear, hoping to loosen him up, but the stuff just dripped into a slick puddle at his feet.

Meanwhile, in a nearby office building, an aged secretary named Mildred plugged in an antiquated coffee-maker and one of those newfangled toaster ovens at the same time(she liked her morning cottage cheese warmed up), causing an immediate and complete breakdown in communications networks throughout the known world and a few other places, too, such as Akron, Ohio. Ever on the spot, Washington officials proclaimed a national emergency over a bizarre condition their top scientists were calling “Virustatic.” “Stay calm!” they assured the populace in their initial broadcast. “All will be well! Stay tuned! This is not a test!” But of course not a soul heard them. Deejays tapped their microphones in bewilderment and then listened to them, as if hoping something might hatch. Soap opera stars, used to live TV, slipped on their soapy tears and no one cried. Newscasters cast news into the wind, which threw back dead air.

After two days of panic, a wiseacre garage attendant named Slim Jim Flimm, walked into the city park, sidled up to the new statue (Gurp), pulled out two old-fashioned television rabbit ears from his deep pockets, and employing his pocket blowtorch, welded them to Gurp’s muscular head. Instantly, all of the radio and television networks revived, saving the lives of thousands of despondent broadcasters. Authorities had no explanation for the mysterious Virustatic onslaught (in Germany they called it “Virustaaaaticgottfriedsonglutenjammer,” in Italy, “Virustaticcisalami”) or its sudden resolution.

Now most days, rain or shine, Slim Jim Flimm hunkers down by the smiling statue, shares a sandwich with the head-nodding pigeons and a quiet laugh with Gurp, who at long last seems to have found some purpose in life.

Petrifaction: 1) when someone is frightened out of their wits, hair standing on end, goose bumps approaching the size of hummingbird eggs, saucers as big as eyes 2) The “PetriFaction” is a politically motivated anarchistic coterie whose sole purpose is to create such unreasonable and unknowable terror as to paralyze any and all governmental bodies.

Fearless Ferd was a professional wrestler acclaimed for his unruly yard-long mop of hair and his uncanny ability to win every wrestling match that came his way, from sumo wrestlers to mountain gorillas to the arithmetical problem puzzling the professor down the street since 1972. So fearless and courageous was Ferd that he had never known a moment of petrifaction in his life, except perhaps once when he found himself surprisingly vulnerable to post nasal drip (he much preferred “pre”). Thankfully, the pontificatory press and his fervent, though as it turned out, fair-weather, fans never got wind of this tragic failing, and as he grew more and more powerful, he found himself increasingly interested in politics. One day (fortunately during an election year), he decided to run for governor of Minnetonka under the aegis of the “Ferdelance Party,” named, not as it was commonly supposed, after Ferd himself, but after his pet venomous viper, Ferdelance, whom he nominated as his running mate (allowed under an extremely obscure Minnetonkan law created as a sub-attachment to a bill passed in 1857).

Little did Ferd know that moments after his initial speechifying, his very own political machine became infiltrated by powerful members of the notorious PetriFaction, a group so nefarious, so unencumbered by charity and good will, so egregiously vocabulary-challenged, that no one had ever actually heard of them. Through highly negative campaign tactics, which included fear-mongering, gossip-mongering, fishmongering, and costermongering, as well as subliminal advertising and sublime televangelizing, the PetriFaction created such a paralytic state-wide gridlock that Ferd cruised to an amazing 96.2% election tally. However, when the dust settled and the graft graphed, it was the vituperative viper, Ferdelance, who actually became governor. The sneaky snake’s first step was to appoint Formerly Fearless Ferd as Chief Visionary Director of Cleaning out Cages (CVDCC) at the Minnetonkan Herpetarium, a lost soul, forever paralyzed by his new-found petrifaction. His only solace, as he darted in and out of cages, valiantly avoiding reptilian zeal, was a lonely late night hotdog slathered with mustard and grape jelly and then turned inside out with the bun tucked tidily within.

Actual meaning of petrifaction: A process of fossilization or petrifying, turning organic material into stone.

Click on the cover photo or the link above to find reviews, further information, and to purchase the book. Amazon Prime members may also borrow the book for free even after the two-day promotion. Prairie Hill is also available at the UK and other Amazon sites.

In 1980, a troubled young stranger arrives in Prairie Hill, a small Wisconsin city. Jimmy Lathrop would like nothing better than to go about his business washing dishes at the popular local eatery, the Pullet Surprize. A fresh start. No questions asked. Then he begins moonlighting as the feathered mascot of the local minor league baseball team and meets someone who will change his life.

Jenny Diggles bides her time serving the locals at the Pullet Surprize, struggling to come to terms with her lonely, eccentric mother, Lila. Should she chuck it all and marry Lance Kilgore, the ambitious general manager of the Cobb Kernels baseball team? Jenny’s passion for prairies and heirloom plants as well as her deepening friendship with Jimmy Lathrop lead to self-discovery.

With its atmospheric backdrop of threatened tall grass prairie and a soon to be abandoned historic baseball stadium and through its cast of colorful, quirky characters, Prairie Hill explores themes of redemption and love.

Below is an excerpt from Prairie Hill, featuring Jimmy Lathrop and Jenny Diggles meeting with their friend the old farm woman, Hulda Bjorklund, at her home.

Jenny

Hulda ushered me and Jimmy into her ramshackle farmhouse and plopped us down on a wood bench behind the kitchen table. “I baked us two kinds of bread,” she said, “wheat and white. Try the honey on the wheat and the jam on the white.”

She plunked down a couple of sticky looking jars. The honey was thick and dark gold, almost brown, and spread on with bits of honeycomb still floating in it, reminding me of ferns in amber. I looked over at Jimmy, who’d tasted some and had a strange look on his face, like he’d seen a ghost. I turned back to Hulda. “I never had honey like this before,” I said.

“From last year,” she said, pushing the jar toward me. “Pile it on. There’s more jars. Still got me a couple beehives and them bees make me honey for the table and wax for candles. Daddy used to keep bees and he taught me how. That honey’s got a lot of clover in it of course, but the bees add in some from the Catalpa trees out back, which gives it that flavor and color. The jam’s from last year’s strawberry patch.” She poured us some lemonade.

“From last year’s lemons,” I said, catching Jimmy’s eye.

Hulda pushed Jimmy’s shoulder and pointed a finger at me. “That girl’s the dickens only most people don’t have a clue.” I was trying to figure out what was so different about Hulda today. More relaxed and not so tired from pushing a mop and making beds, I guess. But then I realized I’d never seen her out of her light blue polyester work suit. She wore a shiny blouse patterned with sunflowers, and knit pants, and she padded around in fluffy red slippers. “You all alone in this house?” I asked and at that moment heard a loud bark, which made us all laugh.

“That’s Ollie wanting to be let in. He’d like to join us I expect.” She stood up. “Yeah, it’s a big rambling old place. Grandpa added on to it when his family grew. He was a tough old buzzard and every one of his kids skedaddled except Daddy, who took over the farm. He and Ma only had me and my brother Emil and that boy left home when he was in his twenties. Emil never cottoned to farming the way I did and Daddy always said I shoulda been born a boy. I worked the farm with Daddy and what help we could afford until he got too old and we just sold off parcels after the highway come through. Ma died about ten years ago and I’ve lived here alone except for Ollie who’s eleven but still thinks he’s a pup.”

Hulda’s kitchen looked homey, if a little shabby, too. She had an old white enamel refrigerator and an even older gas burning stove and she’d covered the table with a green checkered oil cloth. There was a pump painted fire engine red next to her deep kitchen sink. Hulda caught me looking at it. “Still works,” she said, “but it’s just a keepsake. We got running water from our well. The city run their lines through here when they built the industrial park, but I never hooked up.” She pulled open the back door and let in Ollie, who trotted up to us, toenails clicking on the worn linoleum, tail wagging, nose checking us out and then seeking crumbs on our plates. I noticed Jimmy was being real nice to the dog, petting him just right, scratching under his chin, like he must have known and loved a dog once. “He’s a big old mutt,” Hulda said. “One of them puppies from an unfortunate love affair between pure bred collie and something only God could love.”

I suppose like me Jimmy wondered what we were doing there. Hulda didn’t seem to have any purpose beyond being social. She took us through the house which seemed snug enough – though you could tell she only occupied a few rooms out of many. “There’s enough space, Ollie could be king of his own castle, but he likes hunkering down at the foot of the bed in my room.” Ollie padded after us, occasionally sidetracked by an interesting corner, returning with a cobweb on his nose which made him sneeze.

“When was the house built?” Jimmy asked.

“Oh, the middle part goes back nearly 150 years. My great grandfather Olav settled here and built it out of logs – you’d still see ‘em if you took off the siding. It’s one of the oldest houses still standing ‘round here. The barn’s new, though, only a century or so!”

Jimmy paused in front of a row of framed photographs and I came over for a look. The first showed a group of people in Sunday finery, standing in front of the house, a horse and buggy to the side. There was another of the barn with a wind engine next to it and a wagon with a heaped up load of hay spilling over and a couple of guys with pitchforks standing on top looking proud, and then there were two portraits, a stern-looking patriarch and a grim-faced woman in black. “Great grandpa and grandma in old age,” Hulda said, and then pointed at a sepia-toned wedding photo probably taken at the turn of the century. “Them’s my parents,” she said, “and that there is me.” She nodded at a tinted black and white photo, a slim teenager surrounded by a patch of nodding sunflowers. In it, young Hulda held a bouquet of wildflowers.

“Lupine, spiderwort, goat’s beard,” I said, loving the names.

“You could find them all round about, missy,” Hulda said.

“It’s a beautiful photograph,” said Jimmy. “The guy behind the camera knew what he was doing.”

“My brother Emil,” Hulda said. “He was always taking pictures and messing around with them chemicals that bring ‘em out.”

“You were pretty, too,” Jimmy said, musing.

Hulda shook a fist at him. “Just ‘cause I never married don’t mean I weren’t as pretty as a daisy!”

“No, I never meant that. It’s just…”

“I’m an old bat now and it’s hard to picture.” Hulda chuckled. “Never you mind. Come on you two. I want to show you the barn.”

We traipsed outside after Hulda changed into more serviceable shoes. “You never know what might leap up at you,” she said. “They used to cast nails and horse shoes in there before I was born.” We followed her across the side yard to a grassy slope leading up to the barn doors, which hung ajar. Once inside it took some time for our eyes to adjust to the dim haze. Dust motes whirled in the patchy light filtering through clouded windows and thin cracks between the boards.

“Go ahead, take a gander around,” Hulda said.

Jimmy climbed a wooden ladder up to the open loft heaped with stacks of dingy hay bales. He startled some birds which winged it out of the loft doorway. “Barn swallows,” he said. “They’re nesting.”

I heard gentle cooing coming from the far end of the barn. “Pigeons, too,” I replied. Jimmy answered with a darned good imitation and I laughed when a pigeon flapped rather dolefully over to the loft.

We explored some more, peering into abandoned stalls for cows and horses. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the scents of animals and their sounds – munching hay, snorting, neighing and mooing, feet stamping on floorboards. We glanced at countless tools I didn’t know the use for, broken machinery, and rusty buckets and lanterns hanging on walls or propped in corners. The place held a dry, musty and dusty smell that I kind of liked. I led us into a separate room and gasped when I saw stacks of seed catalogs. The newest ones on top dated back before I was born. I’d have to ask Hulda if she’d lend me some. “It’s silly, but sometimes I dream that I find an old shed or barn with a drawer full of seed packets from fifty years ago – and the seeds still germinate,” I said to Jimmy.

There was something kind in his dark eyes, like maybe he knew what the heck I was talking about. “That’s where they’d be,” he said, pointing at long rows of hand-made bins, sun-faded seed packets nailed up to show what would go where. Every bin was empty.

Shalloon: 1) a shalloon is a subspecies of North American loon. Shallow lakes are its preferred domicile. 2) a shalloon is an odd-shaped balloon which resembles a nearly flat bowl. Long-suffering parents use them as a corrective for toddlers who constantly beg for traditional round or oblong balloons.

Luna laughed more than your typical loon, even more than her fellow shalloons of shallow Lake Walloon in Walloomsac, Maine. The Walloomsac shalloons are well-known, though not well-loved, for their riotous laughter. She was not the funniest, perhaps, but certainly the giggliest loon ever to glide along the tickling, rippling waves of the lake. One day, over one thousand balloons appeared, looking like shallow cereal bowls without the cereal, floating silhouettes in an orange sunset sky. Some days before, a throng of cheering children set them free as a promotion for a new corndog restaurant in Wadsac, New Jersey. As each balloon drifted down, the loon population of Lake Walloon snatched them in their beaks and popped them. Luna had trouble catching one, since she was laughing so hard. Then all of a sudden she grabbed what appeared to be a tasty-looking flapjack – she loved flapjacks with or without maple syrup. She bit down hard and there was a sudden hissing noise sounding like one of those angry swans that visited Lake Walloon now and again. Instead of flapjack Luna held flattened rubber. She guffawed, she chuckled, she let out a hoot and then the wildest, loudest loonish laughter ever heard in those parts, or for that matter, anywhere else. It was the only time in history – as far as we know – that two kinds of shalloons got together.

Actual meaning: A lightweight twilled fabric of wool or worsted mainly employed for linings of coats and uniforms.

Muscat: a muscat is a rare subspecies of muskrat known for its powerful ability to mimic musical modes, combining eerie vocalizing with a percussive tail. Uniquely, the muscat of Muskellunge, Idaho, offers the most impressive muscatorial specialty of all – scat singing. In fact, for centuries jazz singers have journeyed to Muskellunge in often vain hopes of catching the melodious scatting of this elusive beast, which sings only on the fourth Monday of the fifth month every sixteen years every other century. The word scat, contrary to popular belief, does not derive its original meaning from certain mammalian emissions or for the common epithet hurled at bothersome cats, but from the wondrous music of the muscat of Muskellunge, Idaho.

On Monday, May 25, 2122, renowned jazz artist Bebop Horne slipped and slid down the banks of the Muskellunge River in Muscatoomi, Idaho. Clambering up the sides of a disused beaver hutch, he hunkered down and waited patiently for hours and hours. At last, just before dusk, and after slapping polyrhythmically at the ever-increasing clouds of gnats, Bebop heard something stir, musically that is. At first it was a ground beat, half-diminished, followed by an intense fusion of diatonic boogie with augmented chromatic syncopation. He sat there, ignoring the gnats, spellbound. The following day, slathered from head to toe in calamine lotion, Bebop Horne composed and then recorded his tribute to the muscat, improvising on the famous old 20th century standard, “Muscat Man,” originally created by the master scatter, Scatmo Riff, and released on his seminal LP, Jamming the Wild Muscat. By late July, “Muscat Man 2122” reached #1 on the newly created Adult Contemporary Heavy Scat Chart, making Bebop Horne a trillionaire, while the muscats stilled their voices once again for the next two hundred years.

Actual meaning: A musky-scented grape, white, red or black, used for wine, raisins and as a table grape. Also, the capital of Oman.